1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electrical plug-in connector with an insulating housing having a recess and a high current socket arranged in the recess. The socket has a contact segment, an intermediate segment and an attachment segment which are formed in one piece from a material cut-out.
2. The Prior Art
Such plug-in connectors are used, in particular, in order to obtain electrical contacts for high current flows, i.e. flows having a large ampere count. For this purpose, electrically conductive plugs in the form of pins are introduced into the contact segment of a high-current socket of this plug-in connector, in order to obtain an electrically conductive connection with other components, by way of the high-current socket.
The high-current socket is inserted into a recess of a housing that surrounds and insulates the high-current socket, i.e. into the corpus of the housing, and usually fixed in place in it. For this purpose, the high-current socket is introduced through the opening of the recess, into the recess, and attached by means of a catch connection, for example.
The high-current socket is subdivided into three segments, which are configured in one piece with one another during production of the high-current socket. The first segment is a contact segment, at which the actual electrical connection with another plug/pin takes place. The contact segment consists of several particularly resilient tongues, between which the pin is introduced. The second segment is the intermediate segment, on which the elastic spring tongues are formed, in order to make the catch connection in the surrounding housing, as described above, possible. The third segment is the attachment segment, with which the high-current socket together with the housing of the electrical plug-in connector can be attached to other components, preferably printed circuit boards, cards, or the like.
The high-current sockets are punched from a flat metal plate, the punching taking place in the shape that is desired for the high-current socket later. Suitable metallic materials that conduct the current well are known to a person skilled in the art. Subsequently, this flat metal cutout is rolled around a mandrel, for example, or pressed onto a mandrel, in order to essentially receive the external shape of a hollow cylinder, viewed in the axial expanse of the high-current socket. In this, the contact segment and the intermediate segment are bent towards one another to approximately form a closed cylinder shape, and the attachment segment is merely bent around to form a half circle or three-quarters circle, so that lateral regions of the attachment segment project essentially perpendicular to the lengthwise expanse of the high-current socket, in order to allow a connection with other components by means of these regions.
German Patent No. DE 693 21 708 T2 describes such an electrical plug-in connector, whereby here, a bend in the contact tongues is provided at the contact tongues of the contact segment, for clamping the related pin of the electrical connector in place, near the free ends of the contact tongues, in order to surround this pin. Furthermore, installation legs are provided on the attachment segment, with which the high-current socket can be attached to another base. Oblong centering guide elements are formed in one piece with the housing, in the interior of the recess of the housing that surrounds this high-current socket, with which guidance of the contact tongues of the contact segment in the recess takes place. Furthermore, catch projections are formed in the recess, which interact with catch tongues on the high-current socket, in order to attach the latter in the housing. Fixation in the axial lengthwise expanse of the cavity socket, relative to the housing, takes place here only in a lengthwise direction. Inserting the cavity socket into the housing too far is not avoided here.